Shirley

360,153 people in America carry this name — ranked #138 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it SHUR lee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

SH ER1 L IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 360,153 2020 Census
  • Rank #138 Common
  • Per 100,000 119.2 about 1 in 920 people

Where Shirley comes from and what it means

Reads literally as “of Shirley”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Shirley has been given

695,247 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1935, with 42,791 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30s 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1930s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Shirley

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Shirley Susan — same opening
  • Shirley Sarah — same opening
  • Shirley Stephanie — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Shirley has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Silent Generation.

Is Shirley a boy's or a girl's name?

0.4% men
358,593 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where in America Shirley is thickest on the ground

In Mississippi the name is given 4.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×4.6
  • South Carolina ×2.3
  • Alabama ×2.2
  • Arkansas ×2.1
  • Georgia ×1.6

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 72.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 18.1%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.0%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

How Shirley is spelled

Shirley is how 97% of them spell it — 372,476 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Names with the same rhythm as Shirley

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Try it Adult Height

Open Adult Height on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers